Content That LTC - LPN Likes

I have been in LTC for 14 years as an aide and now a nurse and I love it. Some days can be crappy and some days are wonderful you just take it all in . The residents are wonderful and become your family of sorts and thats why a lot of us I think love it. You will learn so much about assessment, you are always busy and the rewards are endless. Have fun with it, keep a positive attitude and enjoy!

J. had been the Amish Doctor in that same community for twenty or so years. He has the same eighth grade education as all other Amish but is a self educated man in his field of natural healing. The walls of his office are filled from floor to ceiling with books on all manners of medical subjects.

For example, there are many books on yeast infections, how to treat heart disease the natural way, homeopathy reflexology, iridology, bee therapies and natural healing. J. also has a store, which is in his home, where he sells his own burn salve, ear candles and homeopathic remedies. The homeopathic drops are made there in the community and are much more potent than the manufactured ones. I know because J. had me test a sample from each. I was so anxious to meet him and learn from him. It was a very delicate situation.

Trust had to be established between myself and J. He had to know that what I saw and the subjects we discussed would not go outside that Amish community. I felt privileged to be accepted by this man. Amish Doctors and dentists often are seen as practicing outside the professional arena of physicians and dentists but they provide a much needed service to their communities.

After we had known each other for a while J. told me he had started out as a farrier and found he had a wonderful way with injured and sick animals. In fact, his salves and treatments were first tried on the horses that he shod. When the community noted the success J. achieved with the animals they began requesting he treat them.

When I met J. he had, as we English would call it, a very successful practice. In his practice Old Order Amish patients would visit him. If they were not able to travel to his community in Ohio they would send letters requesting help.

After I was accepted to observe him in his practice I was allowed to read the letters and assist in formulating the replies. Some patients who came to J. for help would stay for some months. For these patients J. would put them up in a small dowdy house on the property, close to the main house, so that he could see them any time of the day or night if problems arose.

The patients and letters came from Old Order Amish communities all over the United States and Canada. These men and women had already tried other forms of medical therapies for their diseases and ailments. The treatments were not successful and now they had turned to J.

Although they do not use electricity, nor do they have telephones in their homes, the news travels fast by “Amish”. J.’s reputation continues to grow. He has done so much for the communities.

I used to tell him, “you are about twenty years before your time in the biomedical community and some day they will catch up with you”.

We have been saying here for quite sometime that there is no real nursing shortage - just a shortage of nurses willing to work at the bedside under the horrendous conditions many encounter. There are an estimated 500,000 licensed nurses who are no longer working at the bedside. Many of these nurses are now migrating back to the bedside, due to economic hardship.

In the near future, due to demographic projections (aging baby boomers + retiring nurse workforce), we will have an actual shortage of ~ 1 million nurses. But we are not there yet.

This deep recession (or depression, as some are now calling it) has not left healthcare unscathed. It is worldwide in its effect, which makes a quick recovery very unlikely. Jobs that were once thought to be "recession-proof" are proving not to be. Many hospitals - the nurses' main employers - have been operating for years on a razor-thin profit margin. Nursing jobs are not nearly as plentiful, many hospitals are having hiring freezes, and some hospitals are closing down entirely. The entire US economy is undergoing a radical reconstruction with many jobs disappearing for good. The effects of an implosion of the runaway overgrown credit economy and market globilization must run their course. We are just a few steps away from government takeover of healthcare, and what this will mean for the profession of nursing in the US is uncertain.

We are definitely living in turbulent times. We really need to be active in the political process and the recreation of healthcare that is about to take place, lest nurses be left out of the equation entirely. I find this recent quotation by Beverly Malone (CEO of the NLN) to be particularly appropriate: "There is tremendous potential for nursing to put its stamp on tomorrow. The future is inventable, not inevitable... Join us in shaping the destiny of health care, an integrated, patient-centered, evidence-based health system accessible and available to all." http://www.nln.org/newsletter/index.htm

It seems like our new president is looking to revamp healthcare, what this means for nursing it is everyone's guess, I hope there will be more funding for nursing services.

There will be, as its already been allocated, and a nurse has been appointed to the department of Health and Human Services (Mary Wakefield, PhD), along with the female governor of Kansas. OK, OK, I'm chauvanistic and proud of it. It's our turn........

Hospital nurses are asked to care for a large load of very sick people, safely. It is near impossible what they ask of us to do sometimes. Many of us feel guilty that we can't meet the impossible demands; we are upset because we can't practice nursing the way we want to, because it has immediate, visible, negative effects on the patient. We are angry and upset at the system that we can't give the patients better, and we have patients, families, management and docs who don't understand, already asking/demanding us to do more/faster. Multiple people give up their lunch breaks already, some even giving up bathroom breaks because of the guilt. We don't need another straw to break the camel's back on that one. It is sad that we need to support each other to go eat once in a 12-16 hour shift. (see http://allnurses.com/general-nursing...no-372337.html)

This is not a 1 day a year vent, there are serious problems in hospital nursing which affect the lives of our patients, and negatively affect the health of the remaining nurses. I absolutely mean everything I have written here, even when I am not upset. That is demeaning to say that we don't mean what we are saying right now due to being upset. Saying that I took care of 8 patients the other day, including one that would probably be going to the ICU (per the doc) is a fact, not venting because I'm mad. The ICU has a 1:2 ratio. Please tell me how I am supposed to care for him along with all my other patients, who had problems themselves, safely? The doc and the charge knew what was going on. All I could do was hope and pray he didn't die on me while I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. In none of my other jobs outside of hospital nursing have I cried at work, and seen multiple others cry, and spoke with multiple others who have had to go on antidepressant or antianxiety medication (and this is at 2 different hospitals). These are facts, not making stuff up because we are upset. Money is not everything when it comes to work. No, of course working at McDonalds is not ideal, but it is the fact is that she is thinking about non-nursing being a better working environment than nursing itself.

From what I've observed over 4 years on this board, there is a lot of support for nursing students here. There is also a special nursing student section on this board.

There are 4 nurses I work with who have told me that they feel trapped because they are the breadwinner in their house, their spouse is laid off, and they need the job to keep their house. They are miserable but they keep working through it. Jobs have drastically dried up because places are using the recession cover to have hiring freezes. Any teenager looking at nursing needs to face the reality of it instead of thinking its a fairy tale job. No, our voices must not be restrained.

Ayvah, Thanks so much for your input. I could not have said it any better. I also have seen great support for the pre and current nursing students on the forum. I have also seen some of the afore mentioned members get upset when we talk negatively about nursing.

It would not be fair for us to sugar-coat how things are for nurses right now, especially in the hospitals. If we allowed them to view nursing through rose-colored glasses, they would then be upset because we did not tell them how tough it might be on them!

When I discuss the problems in nursing on this forum, I am speaking for 95% of the nurses that I work with. If they could choose to leave nursing today, they would do it in a and so would I.

I have said it before and I will say it again: Hospital nursing, especially Med-Surg nursing is going down the tubes. Nurses are overworked, stressed out and mad! When they are able to say, "We are not going to take this anymore", hospitals will be in trouble.

There is absolutely NO WAY that you can adequately care for your patients given the high ratios, higher patient acuity, unsupportive administration, etc...

I, for one, am angry that the career that I worked so hard for and wanted with all my heart has turned into this. I no longer feel guilty for wanting to get out of nursing. I cannot call what I do "nursing". I am a patient representative who works on a floor with sick people. I have a license that allows me to throws some pills at them, start IV's, and write useless care plans that no one has time to update. Every now and then, I get a note on my locker telling me that I failed to do X amount of things during my so-called 12-hr shift, but if I had done the X amount of things they say I did not do, I would have been at work around 15 hours, went home and slept a few hours and then returned again for more of the same. It is a truly vicious cycle.